


Better Than This

by WhoRUReally



Category: God of War (Video Games)
Genre: Bonding, Domesticity, Fimbulwinter, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-18 13:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16119014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoRUReally/pseuds/WhoRUReally
Summary: They get closer every day.





	1. Chapter 1

[ - 4 -

He doesn't mention you much anymore. Not that he did much to begin with.

He tells me stories sometimes. Mostly about shiny palaces, bloody cliff sides, or dead Titans, which I think are a lot like the Jötnar. He'll talk about his homeland, something he hid all my life, but he won't talk about you at all.

Your emptiness feels like a hole in the house, like the floorboards are caving in. I can't stand it. My chest burns like my heart is on fire, but that burn is all I have left. If Father knows, he doesn't say anything. If his heart burns too, he doesn't say.

You looked so beautiful off the peak in Jötunheim. I want to dream about it. It's hard to hide the tears. Somehow there's less room than before - it feels like Father is always here and not here at the same time, like when I was little without the always part.

Even as I write this, he's by the door tending to a wolf pelt.

The wolves are thinner now from not finding food in the cold, which means thinner furs for us. I could feel this one's hunger before I killed it. It wanted to eat us so bad that it tried to bite my arm with an arrow in its eye and Father's axe stuck in its side.

Its fur is a pretty shade of grey, but other than that I don't know why Father is bothering with it. Maybe to give himself something to do in the silence, in the hole you left behind.

I guess I'm not much different. You'll never read this anyway. ]

\---

[ - 7 -

I know what he was doing now. He made the fur into sleeves for each of my clothes. Apparently, I missed some shots the other day because my arms were shaking.

It's not my fault it's so cold out. I missed shots when we were in Helheim, too, and he never mentioned that. It's not like he doesn't miss all the time when throwing his axe. Sometimes he almost hits me with it! He should be thankful I'm so good at dodging or else he could ~~ki~~  I don't know. Whatever.

So that wolf that tried to eat my arm is now protecting it in death. I guess that's ironic. Maybe a little sad.

Father wears fur over his chest with no sleeves at all. I've seen him on fire, he's been to Helheim more than once, and two days ago when a Revenant spit poison in his face, he just blinked and chopped her head clean off. I was standing a fair bit away and it sent me into a coughing fit. I wouldn't be surprised if Fimbulwinter can't touch him.

Since it's supposed to snow for three more winters, I've decided to record the days gone by. I know I'm off by a few, but I plan to honor the promise I made Mother and use this journal she gave me. Over half the pages left are still blank, and everyone knows unfinished stories are the worst kind.

I've counted 7 days so far, off or not. I should be 14 winters old when Ragnarök begins! I wonder if Father knows how old he is, if he even keeps track of the winters. Something tells me no, to both.

Ragnarök is sort of scary though. Maybe all the gods will just stay inside since it's so cold out? I know I want to. ]

\---

[ I had a nightmare that in Jötunheim when we reached in to scatter her ashes the pouch was already empty. I wanted to dream of that moment, but not like this.

It felt so real. Her ashes were gone. Forever. It felt SO real.

Another nightmare? After our journey? I thought I'm supposed to be a man now, or a god. Father has nightmares, too, but they never make him cry. Guess I'm still just a child.

For the record, it's day 12 of Fimbulwinter. Or day not-12 of Fimbulwinter. ]

Atreus frowned at the past three entries before tucking his journal back into the pouch at his waist. A winter breeze tousled the tuft of chestnut hair on his forehead and dusted the rest with snow blown from tree limbs above.

There wasn't much to be done about the biting cold seeping into his legs. At least the corded winingas wound from knee to ankle staved some of it off. He could suck in a breath and swear it froze in his lungs, turned to icy mist somewhere between his chest and lips. Every exhale was a cloud.

Kratos caught sight of a shiver jolt his small form, wolf-fur sleeves tugged down to cover his hands.

"Here. Boy," he called as a distraction, hitching the Leviathan axe to the Greek symbol of war on his back. "Is this edible?"

A cluster of plants shone through the snow at the base of a leafless tree, survivors to the frost in Faye's garden, though they were not the only residents to call the clearing home. The fiery remains of Draugr were gradually melting a few feet away.

Atreus trudged to him like his legs were lined with lead; the aftermath of fighting in the cold or fighting back the cold itself Kratos did not know. He did not consider the fight was internal. Thin legs carved two trenches through snow piled up to his knees as Atreus made his way over.

"Wait..." he gasped from several paces away, attention now fixed behind Kratos, "Father, look!"

The Spartan turned, body tense for a threat. His adversary was a handful of orange bulbs the size of river pebbles that protruded through the snow at the edge of the clearing. Each looked like a multi-faceted gem that should have snapped the thin stem supporting it, but they stood proud, bobbing in the breeze.

"Yes?" Kratos asked. "Another plant?"

"Another plant?! Those are cloudberries!" The small fruits received a hum of disinterest. "Ugh... Just watch!"

He watched. Atreus rushed over, pushed his fur sleeves up to his elbows, and plucked two of the bulbs. Cradling them in a hand, he then bend down to dig until he held a ball of unsullied snow in the other.

"Mom used to do this..." he murmured.

Kratos narrowed his eyes when he squeezed the fruits, destroying them, then worked their popped contents into the snow. The finished product was a light orange snowball stained by fruit juice and presented to him like a trophy. It was cold in his hand, its orange tint catching the dull light of the sun.

"Ugh," Atreus groaned once more, snatching it back when his father did nothing. He bounced in impatience, waving for Kratos to kneel, and when he did, small tattooed fingers pressed against his lips until he relented to the frozen chunk pushed into his mouth.

"Hm," he hummed again, running his tongue over the tart snow. When it melted, it left his mouth sweet. "Clever."

"Mom called them frozen clouds," Atreus bragged, biting into the treat with a smile. "Get it? Cloudberries and snow! She used to-" He swallowed and cleared his throat, infectious joy waning as if the sweet in his mouth had turned bitter. "She used to make them for me all the time. When just the two of us were in her garden."

His father watched him blink in rapid succession and squeeze the snowball in his hand. Icy flakes clung to the stripe of hair on his head, and his arms were shaking once more from the frigid wind. Kratos reached out to tug his sleeves down before rising.

"Come," he instructed, weary of the chill in the air, if not for himself than his child. "It is time we return home."

Atreus stood his ground and gazed up with water-blue eyes. "Are you just... Are you just never gonna talk about her...? Ever again?"

"What would you have me say?"

"I don't know!" he blurted as if he could harbor the words no longer. "I'm not mad. I know you do things differently. It's just that you never... It feels like ever since we got back home, you... I don't know."

"If you do not know, then why do you blame me? It would seem the fault is your own." Those snowflakes dusted in chestnut hair bore the brunt of the truth when Atreus decided he could not and lowered his gaze to the ground.

"You don't understand..."

"I understand enough."

It was clear that marked the end of the discussion.

The shuffle of snow at Kratos' back likely belonged to Atreus returning to gather more berries. While ripping them from their stems would set about their expiration, the boy was blinded by emotion. He knew without looking that Atreus had taken every single one of them.

Kratos' thoughts were more occupied with the leftover doe meat stored in their backyard either souring or being scavenged by an animal. With it frozen in snow, the latter was more likely, and while Mimir had promised the pair he'd watch over it in their stead, a promise from a severed head meant very little in the warpath of a desperate, starving animal, especially the wolves as of late.

The snowfall had doubled by the time they arrived home for the evening. Kratos branched off and retreated to the backyard while Atreus hurried inside and stomped his feet by the door.

A pair of carved horns shone from a candle-lit table to his left that had, before their journey, only held clay jugs of water and dry food. Now it also held the face of a man who idly dozed, gemstone eyes peacefully shut.

"Mimir," the boy sought, a childish mixture of downtrodden, attention-seeking, and spiteful.

"Hm?" Those eyes peered up and glittered with gold. "D'ya need something, laddie? What's got you all worked up now?"

Atreus fumbled for the pouch at his waist and let it do the speaking for him.

"Ahhh," Mimir marveled, observing the fruits cupped in small hands, "Cloudberries! The perfect little snack to stumble upon in chill times. Though the heyday of 'chill times' made the unfortunate choice to pack up and move on a long while ago. The fact that these survived in Fimbulwinter is... nothing short of a miracle, honestly."

"I knew it...! I tried to tell him. We found them in Mother's garden!"

"Then that proves it, no doubt in my mind." Mimir's lips curved in a smile. "Like I said, nothing short of a miracle."

Atreus clutched the berries close to his chest and smiled back.

From the backyard, Kratos recognized the telltale creak of the front door open and close. Once their food storage was sorted and secured, he rounded the house and entered to the sight of Atreus on his knees at the candle-lit table, feeding a piece of orange-tinted snow to Mimir just as he had done to his father.

He stepped around the boy and laid a chunk of venison by the fire to thaw out.

"Atreus," he called to alert of suppertime approaching. His son glanced over, elbows braced on the table, huddled face-to-face with Mimir.

Silence took reign of the house through the evening and well into the night. Kratos busied himself with butchering and cleaning more furs, as the temperature was dropping by the day. Atreus stayed crossed-legged in bed sketching renditions of Aesir gods in the back pages of his journal.

"Father?" he eventually asked over the rhythmic scraping of a knife. Kratos showed no signs of having heard him other than the slightest grunt. "Can you tell me a story?"

Mimir blinked slow, half-lidded eyes watching Kratos work, Atreus' cloudberries collected in a pile beside him on the table. When the boy was answered with another grunt then, for a minute or two more silence, he resigned himself back to his drawings.

"There was a man," Kratos started, blunt. Blue eyes shot up, hand paused on the page. "A Titan. A smaller one. Cursed by the gods, like all the rest. He was bound head to toe and forced to suffer endlessly. Every day, an eagle pecked out his liver, and every night, his body was healed only to be devoured by the eagle once more the following day."

"That's..." Atreus said, "unpleasant... He just stayed that way forever?"

"He begged me to kill him. So I did. I burned him in the Fires of Olympus and used his ashes to further my strength."

"Oh."

"Well, doesn't that tale sound awfully familiar," Mimir mumbled to himself.

"Did you help other Titans?" Atreus wondered, sitting up, journal forgotten in his lap. "Did you... kill any more?"

"It is late." Kratos left his work on the floor and rinsed his hands of wolf blood in the basin by the wall. "You should be in bed."

"I am in bed," Atreus countered, packing his journal away when he received a hard stare for his defiance.

At least, Kratos noticed, the boy was in a lighter mood. He often seemed so after being placated with a story. Kratos suspected it a result of his mother using stories to soothe him in the worst throes of his sickness, when he was bedridden and could scarcely lift a finger to eat for himself.

Kratos had seen little of him in those times, superficial glimpses when coming and going, when retiring to bed and rising in the morning. Atreus had always faced away when he was around, head turned to the wall, refusing to let his father even see his pallid face.

He decided to not dwell on such thoughts now though, as Atreus stripped to linen pants and burrowed into bed. Instead he walked to his bedside and lingered, gazing down at the young face nestled amongst thick furs.

A pair of light brown eyebrows raised in question, though Kratos did not know how to answer. He didn't know what to say. In the end, he chose to say nothing at all.

"Goodnight, Father," a small voice whispered as he turned to the adjacent bed.

"Sleep," he told Atreus.

The boy rolled over and faced the wall, journal tucked under his pillow, cold hands curled to his chest.

\---

[ - 13 -

The bound Titan was Prometheus! Mimir told me. His name is hard to say (even harder to spell) but I noticed it shares the same three last letters with my name. Father's name also ends in an S. Maybe it's a common Spartan thing?

Both Titans and Giants were terrorized by smaller gods in BOTH Mother and Father's homelands. That thought is crazy to me! The wiser, the older, in both places were tortured and slaughtered by their children. Will this ever not be the outcome?

I showed Father how to make frozen clouds like Mom used to, but he didn't really want to talk about it. Mimir said it was a miracle the berries had even survived.

Father is getting better every day, even if he doesn't realize. Even if he doesn't want to. There's something about the way he speaks now, when he does speak... I can't capture it in words.

Thank you for the miracle, Mom. Father thanks you, too, in his own way. ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three years is a long time. [At least Kratos in a fur tank top does funny things to my heart.](https://hdqwalls.com/download/god-of-war-concept-art-5k-3x-1920x1080.jpg)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oct 9, 2018 - Reworked chapter 1 a bit. Fixed some awkward sentences, added some detail. Not necessary to re-read. If you read it after this date, you'll have seen the revised version.  
> Thank you all.

"Woohoo! Heheh..."

Kratos ignored the bubble of laughter and cast his gaze heavenward to a glint of crystalline wings soaring in the air above. Impulsively, without thought, he arched his arm back and hurled his axe, recalling it with a glare when it fell just short and embedded in the high edge of a stone wall a dozen paces away.

"Haha-!"

"Oof, careful, lad!"

"I'm alright!"

The second attempt was closer, axe blade ripping through a sea of snowflakes on its path to its target. Verdant orbs tauntingly watched it once again fall just shy. Kratos refused to tear his glare from the creature, feeling as if Odin himself had sprouted wings and was staring them down. In a way, he was.

"Mimir, catch!"

Something soft broke against his hip from behind as he lined up another shot, easy enough to ignore if not for the boyish giggles that followed. He glanced back to a vibrant smile and pale hands scooping up more snow.

Mimir spat and sputtered from his belt. He cleared the sage's snow-dusted face with the swipe of a hand.

"Why are we here, boy?" The severity in his voice froze Atreus like stone.

"We're... getting those sacred urns that Sindri wanted?"

"That is our goal, yes?"

The child shrunk under the harsh rumble of his voice. "Yes?"

"Then focus on it."

Atreus abandoned a half-formed snowball and distanced himself from the stretch of ice he'd been sliding back and forth on. "Is that what  _you_ were doing?" he mumbled, earning an austere glance that straightened his back. "Yes, sir."

Kratos could not have predicted that the silence behind him as he leveled another throw would be more a distraction than Atreus' laughter had been. He seemed like a doll at times: innocent, pure, carefree. Yet dolls were easily broken.

It was something the boy could not see with the eyes of a child, and Kratos was fine with that. He was fine with being the target of ire if it ensured that doll's skin turned to stone so none could break it. He was fine with the disheartened glower he knew was currently aimed at his back.

"Are we even sure the urns are still here?" Atreus muttered, examining the entrance of the tucked-away ruin near the Lake of Nine.

Snow coated the grey stone, the handle of a dead man's sword lent against the parted doors. He flinched at the crack of nearby glass and looked back in time to watch shattered pieces of Odin's raven fade to dust that clung to his father's recalled axe blade.

While they did not find a single urn inside, they did happen upon a ceramic fragment of something that most likely belonged to one. A group of Hel-Walkers seemed quite fond of it too, enough to fight tooth and nail to guard it with their second lives.

The earthenware shard was small enough to fit in Atreus' hand, and he proudly carried it out and presented it to Sindri who draped himself over Brok in a fit of lament before flailing away with a cry about little beasties.

Brok chucked them an enchantment he'd been working on for their efforts. Atreus apologized to Mimir over the whine of his father's axe being sharpened, drying the melted snow in his beard with one of his wolf-fur sleeves. He was forgiven with a wink and admission that Mimir would have gotten revenge with "enough snowballs to bury Asgard" if he still had hands with which to do so.

It was on their boat ride home that Atreus patted the pouch at his waist and gasped aloud. Kratos was patient through the following panic, rowing them calmly back to the entrance of the dwarven ruins, following as Atreus rushed to where he'd slipped and fallen when sliding on the ice. His misplaced journal was retrieved with shaking fingers that brushed snow from the cover and lingered on Faye's golden hand print.

Atreus did not meet his eyes, but Kratos could see the trembling, hear the hitched breaths.

"Take more care with your belongings," he advised, quiet.

The boy nodded, tracing the outline of his mother's print with a thumb as if he wished to hold her hand. Kratos knelt and wiped his wet cheeks before the tears could freeze on his flesh.

"I've been counting the days since Fimbulwinter began!" Atreus informed him on their second attempt to boat back home, journal safely stowed away. Mimir was clutched in his lap, the back of the sage's head pressed to his stomach like an item of comfort.

He had always preferred travelling by boat to traversing via the mystic gateways. His father's confidence in water was palpable, as much as it had been on their commandeered ship in Helheim. Atreus knew very little about it though if he had to guess, he'd wager his father's homeland sported an abundance of seafaring.

However, judging by the fragile sheet of ice their boat was cutting through on its way home, the freezing temperatures might soon force their hand in the choice between boating and crossing the warm, cozy branches of the Yggdrasil.

"How many days?" Kratos asked, following the river through the thick of the forest, voice a puff of white in the air.

"Twenty-nine so far."

Atreus could have sworn his father laughed, if a sudden exhalation could be viewed as laughter. "You will be counting for a long time, boy."

"I know," he smiled, admiring the beauty of the frozen landscape, cold hands resting on Mimir's temples. Kratos was struck by his optimism, reminded of a doll again. "But it seemed fun. And I think it's something Mother would have done, too. You know?"

He focused over the boy's head on their destination down the river in favor of responding. Minutes passed in silence.

"So, Father. I was wondering. About that Titan, Prometheus..."

The oar paused mid-row. "Where did you hear that name?"

"Uh..." Mimir piped up from the boy's lap. "Guilty?"

"Anyway!" Atreus diverted, confidence fueled by sheer curiosity. Kratos returned to rowing, accepting his authority outmatched against his son's desire for knowledge. "What did Prometheus do to get tortured like that? Did he do something to the gods? Or did they just hate him? Did they hate him because he was a Titan, or because he-"

"I do not know."

"Really...?" the boy deflated, slumping in his seat, hands sliding down to Mimir's jaw. "Are you sure?"

A tide of memories flooded in, the tortured voice of a broken man from countless years ago recalling his acts of betrayal. Kratos had been so young at the time, so enraged, reckless, merciless that he had almost tuned the suffering Titan out entirely, but he did remember.

He remembered every word Prometheus spoke before piercing his wrists with enough arrows to sever his flesh from its bonds and send him into the flames below.

"Yes," he lied, steering their boat around a fallen tree limb. "The gods were fickle. Cruel. And unforgiving."

It wasn't clear if the boy believed it or not, but the questions stopped. Atreus settled back into silence and remained as such the rest of the trip home. At a point it seemed he grew bored of frosted trees and rippling water and fished his journal out with extra care, jotting an entry for day twenty-nine using the top of Mimir's head as a writing table.

"Atreus." Wide eyes looked up from an unfinished sentence. "Come behind the house when you are ready."

Atreus knew better than to answer the order with anything other than a nod, looking back down to complete his twenty-ninth entry.

He was handed Mimir when they docked, nodding to a wordless agreement to take him inside. Afterwards, he did what was asked, rounding the house with nothing but the clothes on his back and the pit of his stomach protesting in hunger. Suppertime was fast approaching, so whatever his father wanted wasn't likely too involved. Still, he couldn't help the impatience hastening his steps.

Kratos sat cross-legged on a patch of frozen earth he'd cleared in the snow just beyond the wooden overhang to the side of the cabin. His axe was set down, the jagged blades of his homeland weapons stabbed into the hard ground beside it. The permeating heat from their steel had softened the soil enough to be penetrated.

Atreus trudged over and lowered himself to be a mirror of his father, legs crossed, back straight. His eyes were bright, Kratos saw. Curious.

"Your knife." It was dug out and handed over. "Turn around." The boy did so. "Do not move."

"Huh? What are-" Atreus had little time to brace before Kratos gripped a handful of his hair and began to saw at it with the knife. "Father...!"

"You are moving."

"It hurts!" He forced his hands to stop before they could reach up and grab his father's, swallowing the urge to recoil.

His mother had given him haircuts before - "An archer must have clear sight," she had said - but her touch was always gentle, her knife always pre-sharpened for the task. It was never like this.

He winced and bit his tongue on the matter, conscious of how quiet his father got of late whenever his mother was mentioned. Weeks ago in the garden with her cloudberries. Today, riding home in the boat. There had been other times, many times, so common Atreus didn't bother to count them anymore.

By now he expected the vague grunts, the oppressive stillness as if the woman he attempted to remember was a stranger. His emotions were fierce, volatile, and always were when things involved his mother, but he struggled to accept the weight of his father's indifference and not to mistake the silence for lack of grief as he once mistook before.

"An archer must have clear sight," his father said behind him, and he froze involuntarily, chest seizing in a crush of nostalgia.

The words encouraged him to endure until a large hand swept over his skull a final time, and he reached up to feel for himself. There was little difference. A bit shorter. Scruffier.

"How does it look?" He turned around on his knees. Little clumps and curls of hair rested in the dirt between them.

"It will suffice."

Atreus saw the statement as a compliment and smiled. They were close, rarely this close for this long when not travelling. Atreus followed the spontaneous feeling that he should take advantage of it and reached out in an attempt to touch his father's head, a teasing question on his lips about if he would no longer need haircuts one day, too.

Kratos seized his hand on its way up, shifting from the small seeking fingers to his son's face. Blue eyes stared back, ever curious.

"Your scars." Atreus waited for clarity from the deep murmur of his voice. "They are in the shape of..."

"Your tattoos." His gaze traced the red ink crossing his father's left eye. "Mother pointed them out to me. She said I was really sick that day, that I shouldn't have tried to go outside. I don't remember what happened. I think I was too young."

Kratos' face softened as he wavered in memories of a kind-hearted boy with flesh cursed by markings, lost in these thoughts long enough that the small hand he held tensed in his own.

"What do you think is gonna happen at Ragnarök, Father?" his son whispered, troubled, lost in thoughts of a different kind. Kratos lowered their joined hands so they were resting on the cold earth beside curls of chestnut hair and did not let go.

"You know more of the legends than I do, boy."

"Yes, but I mean." Eyes lowered, ashamed of the fear they held. Kratos allowed the doll this moment of frailty and rubbed his knuckles with a thumb. "What's going to happen to _us_? Do you think..."

"We will do as we always have. Nothing has stopped us yet."

"I just don't want... anything bad to happen. It hurts to think about. One of us..." He could not say the words. Kratos heard them nonetheless and fell silent.

"All men die one day. That is life, Atreus. Do not fear it."

"But we're not men," he managed around the tightness in his throat, "We're gods. Right?"

When his father's hand squeezed his, Atreus tried not to wince in pain, but his hand was aching and his eyes were stinging from the tears welling onto his lashes and carving down his cheeks like shards of ice. His father was quick to wipe them away.

"I'm sorry," he whispered for crying. Twice in one day, he reminded himself. Like a child. "M'sorry..."

Kratos kept one hand on his and the other on his cheek, clearing tears as they came, brushing the scars under his left eye with every swipe of his thumb.

\---

[ - 29 -

Odin's ravens are watching us. He must know he's lost control over Ragnarök by now. He probably knew on day 1, if not even before that.

There's so much time until the end of Fimbulwinter, but Father seems to think it's too much. Sure, the days pass slowly, mostly the same only with more snow than the last, but there can never be too much time! Exploring, helping people (both alive and dead)... I have talked with Father more in the past 30 days than I have my whole life, I think.

It used to feel like being with a stranger, and there were times when I wished instead of Mother it had been Father who... Well, now I don't even want to imagine that. It makes my chest burn just like thinking about her does. I can't believe I used to want such things to happen to him. Father once told me he would die for me, but I think I would die for him, too.

I know I can't say that, though.

I hope Ragnarök never comes. If we could just spend

...I hope Ragnarök never comes. ]


	3. Chapter 3

He fit in his father's palm on the day he was born. This pink screaming thing with thin limbs and visible veins. Kratos had passed it naked and bloody to Faye who'd held it close and muttered, "My beloved."

In Greece, women had sauntered on adorned stone holding silk-swaddled children bred for power, blessed with strong features and glowing with olive skin. Calliope had been tiny but held the spirit of the sun. Her radiance bloomed more and more each time her father returned home, hugging his thighs in greeting and dancing away to play her flute.

It took Kratos five hours of inconsolable crying to accept these Spartan children were nothing like his son. The baby arrived weeks before his time and spit up breast milk on a daily basis. Faye sang old Norse songs under the wailing at night. When her voice failed to soothe, she sat with Atreus on their bed and bounced him until the sun began to rise.

Kratos stayed awake with them too, but prone, eyes shut, exhausted and listening.

The rare times Faye left her beloved behind were mainly to work in her garden. Kratos would set the linen-wrapped bundle on his lap and touch it very little, but watch every change in expression, every tiny, quivering yawn, every shift those blue eyes made to examine some object in the room.

Faye would lean in the door frame and watch them with fingers coated in dirt, face sweaty, and hair pushed back. The bundle remained on Kratos' lap for more than an hour at a time, and when her husband did not move, quiet and watchful of this tiny, pink thing, this child so ill he cried most of the night, Faye would leave him there for longer.

"You have left him too long," Kratos said to her now.

Nothing answered but the wind slicing through the forest at his back.

He'd been standing and staring at the golden hand print on the tree before him long enough for snowflakes to bury the tips of his boots. The scent it gave off was familiar, a cloying mixture of crushed cloudberries and herbs Atreus had combined in his mother's stone mortar and pestle, illuminated by an incantation the boy had muttered as he'd mixed it.

This print, like the other seven on select trees around the forest, was a match of Kratos' hand this time, not Faye's. It still looked close enough to root him to the spot. He knew the golden print came from his hand and knew Faye could not hear him, but those things failed to matter at the moment.

He saw the shape of a linen-wrapped bundle in the thumbprint, and a tiny, smiling girl in the pinky. The index finger stood tall and proud, face sweaty, hair pushed back, closest to the thumb, and the ring finger held a distant matrimonial beauty, pressed closest to the pinky. Tallest was the middle finger between them all, not as strong as the index, not as beautiful as the ring, and not as close to the small fingers on either side. Just in the middle. At the center of it all.

They were not musings he had the luxury to dwell on, but they swirled through his mind all the same. Perhaps it was the quiet chill of the forest, or the wind so hollow it felt as if the world was dead. He cast them aside as he turned from the tree, thoughts of seeing his son overpowering all.

Upon arriving home, he found the boy on hands and knees at a patch of cleared ground before the front door, bow and arrow stabbed into the snow and propped against the cabin. Mimir, posted beside him on a snow mound indented with finger marks, speared Kratos with an immediate stare.

"This is it! I know her writing better than anyone!"

"Gods, finally..." Mimir sighed. "Kratos, the boy is-"

"Father, I'm almost done."

Kratos slowed to a stop behind the frantic child digging at his doorstep.

"Your boy's upset that the stave isn't working, brother."

"It  _will_  work!" His hands and knees were muddy with slush, knuckles dragging against the frozen earth in an effort to copy the protection stave carved on the door so many years ago. "Why would Mother write that if it's broken?!"

"Because you're not thinking, lad. There are more to staves than just the runes. There's magic in the-"

"Shut UP!"

"Boy." Kratos hauled him to his feet by an arm. The skin in his grip was pink and freezing as if the boy'd been digging through snow since his father had left into the forest. "What are you doing?"

"I'm almost done!" The arm yanked in vain to free itself, soggy fur sleeve bunched at the elbow. "Father, stop!"

Breath labored from his lungs, forehead burning with a fever like that tiny, pink thing in the palm of his hand eleven winters ago.

"Inside."

"What? No! I'm so close to learning her-"

"Inside. Now. Or I will take you there myself."

The boy smartly avoided the latter, leaving the door open behind him.

Kratos had no hope of deciphering the etched symbols repeated over and over beneath the icy sludge at the doorstep, but he recognized them well. The day Faye had carved the stave on the door, the day they'd constructed this cabin together, her tall form bent over a thick slab of wood in the dirt, writing with a meticulous precision. At the time, her husband had brushed it off as some manner of lucky charm from these Northern lands.

Now a smear of her son's blood shone against repetitions of that exact carving on the ground, dying snowflakes that fell upon them crimson.

"He told me a story about her," Mimir said as Kratos bent to grab the filthy knife and wipe it clean against his pants leg. "How she taught him runes by candlelight. Told him he's a quick learner. He's got a bite, that one, when things don't go his way."

"Hm." Kratos dragged his boot in the dirt to erase the failed staves. "Watch the yard, head."

"Oh, not going anywhere, brother. You have my word on that. Just be gentle, yeah? He's, uh..."

"I'm aware."

"I know how to do it," Atreus said as the door was closed to shut out what little cold hadn't already polluted their home. His dirty heels kicked against his bed frame in low thuds until Kratos knelt and removed his shoes.

"I thought you were beyond this."

Blazing eyes didn't dare look up. "Beyond what?"

"This childish anger you lose yourself in."

Kratos bore the glaring as he stripped the child and carefully bound his sore hands with white cloth stored under Mimir's table. His right hand quaked violently, colder and rosier than its match, dripping blood onto the bed from a broken nail and scraped knuckles.

"I am disappointed in your recklessness, boy."

"I'm not being reckless at all!" The Spartan hummed, unconvinced. "I told you I could learn her stave, and I did! I just hit a block, and Mimir wasn't helping. You can't read or write, and Mimir doesn't have hands, so I'm the only one who can put the stave back up. Just _stop_ -"

"You will stay inside until I say otherwise. Do not think to defy me."

A hand smoothed over his short hair and peeled back the covers of his bed, but Atreus sat up stunned, small, pale, and unclothed, until Kratos grunted, tossed a log to the fire, and headed for the door.

Bare feet hit the wood and hesitated. Unsaid words burned on his tongue. The chill seeping in eventually coaxed him to bed where he pulled his limbs close and curled into a ball. It pained his hands to dig out the journal and writing utensil from under the pillow, but it pained him more to lie in hollow silence staring at the closed front door.

[ He hates you. He doesn't talk about you and now he doesn't even care about your stave. he hates you it's like you never even existed and every day it gets worse and worse i cant believe i thought he was getting better ]

Atreus pressed his face into his pillow and struggled not to scream. Instead, he focused on the fur over his body, heavy and warm like a pair of phantom arms. He inhaled the scent of his rough pillow case and imagined it was the skirt of one of his mother's dresses.

'You know how your father is,' he imagined her saying in that whisper-soft voice she always used when he was ill. 'He'll come around. Just give him time.'

"It's been fifty-seven days..." he answered to the emptiness, journal knocked to the floor, arms tight around his pillow. "Only three winters left, and then..."

The following day, an extra pelt had been draped over his bed and his journal had been placed by the fire. After Kratos heated a pot of stewed venison and left, Atreus spent the morning flipping tattered pages of books he'd seen dozens of times before lying with Mimir on a pile of furs and singing songs his mother'd taught him. His father returned well past evening empty-handed.

"We need the stave up," he pointed out, tracing the gold on Mimir's horns with a bandaged finger, but his father simply grabbed his knife from the table and turned back to the door. Atreus sighed at the thought of eating venison for the twentieth meal in a row.

"There was a town far from here. Gifted with strength and the pride to wield it," Kratos attempted to comfort that night, the first words he'd spoken since condemning his son to the house a day prior. "In this town, two mongrel dogs grew up together with a mother but no father."

Atreus blinked up at the shadowed ceiling, breathing through a stuffy nose and suffering a headache.

"The older dog was solid brown, but the younger was born with a coat of white spots. The town they roamed had a prophecy. A dog with white spots would one day kill them all. So they locked the spotted dog in a cage at the bottom of a cliff and left him there."

"The brown dog killed them, didn't he?" Atreus guessed, rolling over and seeking his father's face in the darkness. The most he could make out was the outline of his form under furs in the adjacent bed. "Because they locked up his brother."

"You are smart."

"So what about the prophecy?" He sniffed and coughed hard to clear his throat. "It was wrong?"

"It was right. When his brother was taken, the brown dog rolled in specks of white paint to remember his kin. So when he killed the town, he too was spotted."

"Aw." Kratos could hear the smile in his voice. "It sounds like he loved his brother a lot."

"I can imagine he did," Mimir said softly from across the room.

A blockade presented itself between Kratos and the door the following morning in the shape of a small boy with wolf fur draped over his shoulders, blue eyes bleary and runny nose persistently wiped by the back of a bandaged hand.

"You didn't eat anything," the boy said.

A suspended pot of venison, herbs, and winter vegetables simmered above meager flames.

"I made it for you," Kratos told him.

"Oh. Well... Can I go outside now?" Kratos thought twice about even responding. "It's just right at the door. Then there'd be enough food for both of us."

When his father reached to his forehead, small fingers intercepted and pushed the hand away. Kratos stared into the sickly face of Faye's beloved.

"I'll be fine. We need the stave back! The animals that haven't fled cry at night from all the Draugr. You can't hear them, but I can. Why don't you trust me?"

"You are too emotional," he listed, opting for brutal honesty. "You forget a part of you is mortal. You put a simple task above watching your health, which ultimately keeps you from your goal. You anger when proven wrong. You do not understand your own well-being is more important than this stave. These are lessons you will learn, Atreus. I will teach you."

"But the stave  _is_ important!" Fists clenched around the edges of the pelt fur and clutched it to his chest, face heated by the same anger mentioned moments before. "It's for the forest! And for Mother! Don't you care?!"

Silence ate at the room as Atreus waited for words that never came. His chest burned like his heart was on fire until that burn was all he had left.

"I know you lied about Prometheus."

Wind battered at the side of the cabin.

"You killed other Titans, didn't you? Ones that  _didn't_ ask for it."

Mimir stayed silent and watchful from his table as Kratos began to leave.

"Just like Thor..."

He made it ten steps into the biting snowfall before realizing he'd forgotten his axe, but settled with only his fiery blades and carried on without it.

\---

[ - 58 -

Cloudberries.  
Frozen moss.  
Chervil (different from parsley, look at the stem!)  
Snow for thinning.

"Shine with a light that blinds."

Mix.

If it doesn't glow, repeat and add more berries. ]


End file.
